Thursday, May 19, 2011

Mock Rick And I

Or do famous people only get to be famous thanks to of lots of similar people clubbing together to get their chosen MeeMee spotted by the media so they can bask in the reflected glory?

If it’s true that you have to speculate to accumulate, I’d better start clearing out the attic.

Anyhow, on to my point.

Just round the corner from me lives Mock Rick Wakeman. I’ve never seen him flouncing around in an ankle-length cape or loading the back of his car with a dozen Moog synthesizers — but those eyes! That hair! That beard! Truly, it is he!*

* I should point out that he doesn’t resemble Rick Wakeman in his dashing 70s prog rock sorcerer incarnation so beloved of the Human Barbie Doll League, for to gad thusly in this austere new decade would be tantamount to declaring a Steiner education (for which, I now understand you can be permanently LOCKED UP).

So, yes, some days in the street, it’s just me and Mock Rick, bumbling along minding our own business with nary a care in the world about the world (other than, perhaps, on my part, a moment’s reminiscing about whether Jon Anderson will ever release another pretentious album of his trademark hippy drippy castratio twaddle).

Mock Rick passes one way, I pass the other in a Yin/Yang dance of idle perambulation. One day, he is the Yin to my Yang, the next, the Yang to my Yin. Why we’re never run over, I have absolutely no bloody idea.

Is that a glittery statuette of Bach poking from his dungaree pocket?

Don’t be silly — it’s just a yellow label tuna ‘n’ sweetcorn sandwich from the supermarket, partially crushed but nonetheless edible, and no doubt when he gets home he’ll nibble it with relish with his feet up watching Bargain Hunt, possibly swigging a can of lemonade from one of his two fridge freezers (because even though he’s MOCK Rick and owns no array of Steinways, the laws of Look-ee-like-ee dictate that beyond the physiognomy there must be some small similarity, some quirk of replication in the fabric of the universe, all of which kind of explains why Dr Christian Jessen collects saddles).

So we pass.

We nod.

We idle.

Maybe I’ve said ‘morning’ to him, I don’t know. Maybe I’ve even said ‘morning’ to him in the afternoon and he’s thought what’s Mock Whatsit thinking? and as long as his Whatsit isn’t Bette Midler then I’m fine with this kind of Pavement Friendly. Maybe he’s not even generously mocking like me. Maybe I’m not even any kind of Whatsit — just That Bloke. You never know how it goes with someone you see most days but have never said more than ‘hello’ to.

Me and Mock Rick.

Mock Rick and me.

Bumbling along the street in our dungarees and our snazzy Hawaiian shorts as seasons pass and dogs shed fur and generations of insects come and go, sometimes with the irritating and ironic buzz of a Hammond organ on the blink.

So when Mock Rick got hit over the head with a crowbar the other week, naturally I was shocked.

To me, he’s someone I might get to talk to one day. Thanks to some chance accident with a fat woman on a bike, where we both run across, drape our cardigans over her immodesty. Some kid with a lost pet toad. Some Morris Men collecting money for the old folk, but one of them chokes on a Satsuma.

If we spoke, would I admit to harbouring a secret joke about him? That he reminded me of an ageing hero of pompous sub-Classical keyboard trilling? That every time we pass I think, “tee hee, there goes Mock Rick”?

Better that than being the miserable fucker who left him in a pool of blood for the sake of the contents of a till.